Saying it was “time to raise our game,” Gov. Bill Haslam unveiled a $50 million initiative on Thursday to promote entrepreneurship and spur private investment in Tennessee startup companies as part of a broader “knowledge-based jobs” creation plan.

The new plan includes $30 million to create investment funds that target early-stage or seed companies, along with an unspecified level of funding set aside for current or new business incubators across the state. Incubators are designed to help owners develop their ideas and give young businesses a low-cost place to start operating.

The initiative also calls for developing specific economic development plans by region.

Sure, in a perfect world, we'd all live near work. A short commute saves time and money and makes it easy to bike or walk to the office. But in the real world there are lots of factors affecting where we choose to live, and work is only one of them.

Perhaps moving to be near your job would be more appealing if it came with $12,000 dollars. Washington, D.C.'s Office of Planning is launching a pilot program called Live Near Your Work that will match up to $6,000 in incentives that businesses offer to employees to move near work or public transit. The new digs just have to be within two miles of work, within half a mile of a Metro station, or within a quarter mile of a "high-quality" bus corridor. The program has $200,000 to give out in total, which isn't much, but that's just for this initial phase.

Stefan Lindegaard uses a term called “smartfailing” to describe a new approach to failure. A smartfailing organization, when things go wrong (as they frequently will), does not focus its energy on assigning blame and doling out consequences. Instead, the smartfailing organization uses failure to become better. When an organization embraces smartfailing, it de-stigmatizes failure internally and uses failure as an opportunity to learn and to find a better course.

The April issue of the Harvard Business Review is dedicated to learning from failure. Story after story from corporate thought leaders seems to indicate that companies are taking steps towards viewing failure as something to be understood and learned from rather than punished or suppressed. If corporations are learning to learn from failure, why not universities? It seems that universities should be even more comfortable with the idea that failure is a learning opportunity. After all, U.S. research universities are under less short-term pressure to make a profit. At least in theory, universities seem like natural smartfailers since university culture celebrates open-ended basic scientific inquiry and academic freedom. Yet, in my experience, many university work environments are not yet ready to embrace smartfailing.

The popular view of drug development is that it is fantastically expensive undertaking. The most recent cost estimate (according to research published by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development) is a whopping $1.3 billion.

Some would say that such a high cost is advantageous to the pharma industry since it creates a powerful argument for premium pricing and patent term extension.

But is the number true?

A recent report in the London School of Economics journal BioSocieties by Donald Light (University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey/Stanford University) and Rebecca Warburton (University of Victoria) casts doubt on the hefty price tag.

Many adults yearn for the warm summer days of their youth, when they whiled away the days lazing on a few rough planks, twenty feet up in an old oak in their backyard. Today, because they’re adults and have jobs that pay real money, they don’t have to settle for used lumber:

The six front runners in the race to be chosen as Europe’s information and communication technology research flagships were announced at the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Conference in Budapest yesterday (4 May).

The projects, selected by peer review from 21 submissions from researchers all over Europe, have been awarded €1.5 million each, and now have a year to develop and refine their proposals before the final beauty parade in which two will be selected for Flagship status and a promised budget of €1 million each over ten years.

The ambition for these two flagships is to deliver major breakthroughs in information and communication technologies that will create important new markets and deliver significant social benefits by helping to deal with problems like chronic disease, climate change and natural disasters.

GoodCompany Ventures is taking applications through Friday for admission to its third accelerator program for social entrepreneurs.

The Philadelphia-based nonprofit plans to accept eight to 12 entrepreneurs for its 2011 Social Impact Incubator, which will be housed at the University of the Arts’ Corzo Center for the Creative Economy in Center City starting June 2.

The program lasts 10 weeks and culminates with an Investor Showcase where program participants get to pitch the merits of their companies to individual investors and representatives of early-stage venture-capital firms. GoodCompany said that last year more than 100 investors attended its showcase and more than half the companies in its program that sought funding got it within six months.

ANN ARBOR, Mich., May 4, 2011

WHO

The Accelerate Michigan Innovation Competition, supported through the collaborative efforts of the founders, the Business Accelerator Network for Southeast Michigan and the New Economy Initiative of Southeast Michigan and the premier sponsors, Business Leaders for Michigan and the University Research Corridor.

WHAT

Cash winnings, plus in-kind awards of services, staffing and software valued at more than $1 million will be awarded to top entrepreneurial businesses that make a commitment to locate and grow in Michigan. The Accelerate Michigan Innovation Competition includes a competition for college students with innovative business ideas.

Triangle - The newly formed Inception Micro Angel Fund in RTP (IMAF-RTP) brings attractive start-up business opportunities to North Carolina private investors and early seed equity financing to qualified entrepreneurial businesses.

IMAF-RTP

IMAF-RTP is a member-managed, seed stage, angel capital fund, designed to capitalize on the growth in entrepreneurial activity in the Research Triangle Park area, and is a Qualified Grantee Business for the NC Investor Tax Credit. The fund will also reach out to greater North Carolina and to selected areas of Virginia and South Carolina.

The Fund is focused on pre-launch companies in several industries, and positions itself as providing the financing entrepreneurs need to finalize their business just prior to launching into the market. Essentially, this financing is what entrepreneurs need to prepare the businesses for the first round of formal angel financing.

IMAF RTP Investors

Internationalization is one of the best opportunities for innovative start-ups to grow their business. Science based incubators can facilitate this process by providing excellent ‘sending’ and ‘receiving’ services that make tenants “jump high and land softly”. This will result in high-tech clusters from all over the world coming closer together.

This year's Annual Conference on Science Based Incubation of The Technopolicy Network will take place from the 28th till the 30th of November 2011 in Auckland, New Zealand. The Innovation Tour “Modern Science Meets Middle Earth” will take place on the 30th of November and last a whole day.

The value of “creative flow” cannot be underestimated. It’s a source or inspiration, imagination, and genius – things coveted by man for centuries.

Despite some common beliefs, great ideas don’t arise from a deepset effort to expel intelligence, but rather a process of “expressing” thoughts and energy without self-scrutiny. The greatest encumbrance we face is, not surprisingly, our own self-delusions and insecurities.

In reality, many of the assumptions we have about ourselves and the world curtail our creative potential. Notice when our creativity was flourishing as a pre-teen we also had the fewest number of assumptions about what can and cannot be/happen. Often unknowingly, we begin to veer away from engaging our mind to pander to knowledge-based activities and professions where mental recall is displaces creative output.

Dogged by corruption and instability, Russia was once regarded as a difficult place to do business, but there are signs that times and attitudes may be about to change for the business angel market within the boundaries of this former Communist superpower.

A quick browse through the Moscow Times yesterday revealed an article about the need for Russia to improve its image amongst foreign investors. The country needs to show the world that it has a lot of pent up potential when it comes to innovation and that it is no longer a difficult place for investment in innovation.

Despite the oft-reported wealth of its oil billionaires, Russia’s VC and business angel sector is underdeveloped in comparison to major economies in Western Europe the United States and Asia. So in a bid to boost innovation in the country President Dmitry Medvedev is rolling out his modernization and innovation agenda which has seen a number of foreign VCs invited to innovation forums and conventions recently.

Columbus, Ohio - Attracting increased financial capital to assist Ohio businesses is one of the premiere goals of Governor John Kasich and the Ohio Third Frontier. As part of the strategic planning process to continue to improve the renowned technology-based incentive program, a Financial Capital Forum is being held today, bringing together the insights of venture capitalists and angel investors from around the country.

The forum, held at the Blackwell Inn on The Ohio State University campus, includes a panel discussion on the elements of Ohio's financial ecosystem, breakout sessions on various stages of business development, presentations, and recommendations on ways the state can improve access to financial capital.

"Economic prosperity and job creation will not happen without an attractive business environment and the availability of financial capital," said Mark D. Kvamme, Director of Job Creation. "Ohio is making improvements but still has a way to go in order to keep up with other business centers of the world, and that's the gap this forum looks to address."

After 4 years since the original Maxims for Mavericks book, I am finally releasing the new version with 95% new content. Best of all, I am giving the ebook away for FREE… at least for a while.

Get your FREE copy here: http://su.pr/7A5gvV

As we are shift from an information economy to a creative economy thinking differently has never been more important. M4M explores the topics of innovation, creativity, leadership, and the process of creative disruption.

Darwin had it right! The quick survive. Others die. The strategy is simple. Outrun your competitors! And that’s exactly what a lot of people and businesses attempt to do, including universities in their scramble to commercialize university research. Some universities have even taken to branding themselves with “one-size-fits-all” licensing deals that can be signed on the quick time. The Carolina Express License is one example among many. But does it work? Is fast the only answer?

“Survival of the fittest” is a tricky business as Darwin well knew. “Quick” never really meant “fast” in the sense of a gazelle outrunning the lion. It meant the ability to adapt to change better and faster than competitors. And change is exactly what universities face in the 21st century. Driven by the ubiquitous demands for innovation and entrepreneurship from all quarters as the American answer to global competition, universities must adapt. They have no other choice given their role as the core element of regional innovation ecosystems.

As a baby boomer, I have found myself working for a number of bosses (in my case, editors) who are Gen X or Y (and some sound fresh out of college). But they don’t seem to hold my boomer status against me. Sometimes I even detect a note of respect. That appears to be true for many baby boomers, according to an AP-LifeGoesStrong.com poll.

The poll found that nearly half of people born between 1946 and 1964 work for a younger boss, and most report that they are older than most of their co-workers. But when responding to a general question about whether their age was an asset, a liability or not an issue at work, 25 percent of boomers surveyed said their age was an asset, while 61 percent said it was not an issue. Only 14 percent said their age was a liability. There were 28 million people 55 and older in the workforce in 2010.

There is no shortage of people willing to give it a try.

Often, the technology is good. Perhaps there is even a proof of concept or demonstrator model to prove that the concept is technically feasible. The idea might even be protected or branded, perhaps by a patent or trademark.

Less often, there is even a customer ready for pilot use, and on rare occasions, there is even money around to fund development or production.

But the business still staggers to succeed. Why?

Because the product or service requires other activities alongside it before it can be used.

Remember the Internet in the 1980’s? Yes, it was already there back then. But it was only of use to a few defence organisations and research centres, and could not be used by the industry and community - and not because there was no “broadband” network (there was, it was called ISDN)! It stalled because there was no browser to use it. It was not until Mosaic, and later Netscape emerged in the mid 1990’s that the Internet and data communications technology became useful, let alone popularised. The original Internet lacked complementary assets to be of much use on its own: in this case, browser technology was missing.

Where do millionaires live?

Where will the millionaires be in 2020?

What are they invested in?

All those questions are the focus of a fascinating study from Deloitte Center for Financial Services on the state of millionaires, and how things will change over the next decade.

If you're a banker looking for wealthy clients, it's a must read.

1. A little bit of planning goes a long way
2. It never hurts to ask
3. Leverage your strengths, ignore weaknesses
4. Iterate, Iterate, Iterate. Always be searching for a more efficient and effective way to get the same results
5. Everybody has an idea, the trick is EXECUTION